The Fed Switches to Lite Beer

Far from removing the punchbowl, the central bank slightly reduces the size of its pour. Party on.

The job of the Federal Reserve -- in the famous assessment of William McChesney Martin, who headed the central bank through the halcyon days for the U.S. economy of most of the 1950s and 1960s -- was to take away the punch bowl when the party really got started.

It's a quaint metaphor from a simpler, more innocent time, a scene out of the America of Norman Rockwell, whose depiction of "Saying Grace" garnered $46 million in...